With the advances in technology in recent years, many complex electronic devices have been designed and produced for mass consumption by the public. These electronic devices often utilize hundreds of components, some of which may be very expensive. The cost of these components is, of course, reflected in the final cost of the product. Additionally, each component in an electronic device is typically ordered, stocked, and assembled separately. Therefore, as the number of components utilized by an electronic device increases, the possibility of errors occurring during the manufacturing process also increases. These manufacturing errors may, in some situations, be corrected by repair of an incorrectly manufactured device, or, if repair is not feasible, by discarding the incorrectly manufactured device. In either case, however, the repair cost, i.e., component cost and cost of time spent repairing the device, and the cost incurred when a device is discarded are reflected in an even greater product cost.
Furthermore, the use of large numbers of components within an electronic device typically increases the size of the device. In some smaller electronic devices, such as pagers which are intended for portable use, this is usually very undesirable from a user standpoint. As a result, desirable but unnecessary features may sometimes be omitted from a pager to ensure that space is available for necessary components. Some of these necessary components are, for example, switches, e.g., on/off switch, reset switch, etc., and an annunciation device, such as a transducer for announcing message reception, both of which are relatively large compared to other components included within a pager. As a result, these components consume large amounts of space that is already at a premium in conventional pagers.
Thus, what is needed is a method for combining the functions of two or more larger pager components into a single device, thereby reducing the number of parts included within the pager and creating additional space for other pager components.